The international conference ‘Perspectives of national cultural policy development in the EU context: critical dialogues’ will take place in Zagreb on 18-19 May 2017. The conference is organised within the framework of activities of the Jean Monnet project ‘EU Competences and National Cultural Policies: Critical Dialogues’ and it intends to contribute to enhancing the knowledge about the relevant cultural policy processes at the European Union level. By bringing together researchers, cultural professionals and policy-makers it will foster the dialogue between different cultural-policy stakeholders, putting into the spotlight the issue of the need for sustainability of culture, as well as the fact that there is no sustainable development without culture. The international conference ‘Perspectives of national cultural policy development in the EU context: critical dialogues’ aims to address the pivotal question whether it is time for a paradigm shift in cultural policies and what are the possible ways forward. We invite researchers, cultural professionals, artists, cultural workers and policy-makers to share their knowledge, visions and concerns. The conference will tackle different challenges for EU and national cultural policies today including:

• Innovative cultural policies: what new models are there?
• Explicit and implicit cultural policies: will culture thrive in EU and its Member states?
• EU and cultural policy issues: limits of subsidiarity?
• EU soft policy mechanisms impacts on national contexts (OMC, Structured Dialogue, Creative Europe, lessons learned from the European Capital of Culture competition)
• Culture in the context of post-globalisation: what role for cultural policy research?
• Digital shift and its implication to sustainable culture of the future
• Socio-cultural inequalities and crises (democratic, migratory, economic); migrations and intercultural dialogue from the cultural policy perspective
• Achieving sustainability in cultural development: which way forward?

The conference will be organised in the form that allows plenty of discussions. In addition to two keynotes addressing EU and national level issues of cultural policies, main issues tackled in the sessions will be:

• Cultural policies and the crisis in/of European Union – how to achieve sustainable cultural development? Strategies and tendencies of local cultural development in Europe: the role and impact of European Capital of Culture project
• What kind of European comparative cultural policy research is needed today?
• National cultural policies in need of vision, innovation and leadership.

Please save the dates. Registration will be open soon and all information will be available at the project website culpol.irmo.hr.